Get Out of Here, Marine: What a young MSG saw in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam before the bombings

In the 1980s, Marine Security Guard Mike DiBello stood post at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. At both, he raised the same alarm: the buildings sat too close to the road to survive a car bomb. He was a lance corporal, the junior man on site, and no one listened. In 1998, both embassies were destroyed in the al-Qaeda bombings that killed hundreds.In this episode, Mike describes the warnings he gave and the trouble he caught for testing his own guard force by planting a fake device under a Marine vehicle. He walks through the flaws he saw firsthand — thin, unreinforced perimeter walls and no standoff from the street. He remembers serving alongside Patrick Kowalski, later killed in the Zona Rosa attack in El Salvador, and reflects on the camaraderie of the third-world posts he loved.